馬 = horse. These creatures are known for their beauty, hard work, speed, and stamina.鹿 = deer. These creatures are also known for their beauty, but are considerably more idyllic and delicate. Hence it invites both comparison to and contrast with the horse.

So, 馬鹿 combine to form a representation of the beauty of all things, despite their differences.

(Actually I think I saw an example just like this somewhere before, probably on this very forum, but the details were surely entirely different. )

Infidel wrote:Snow Crash. You just don't get a better protagonist than a Katana wielding pizza delivery boy for the mafia driving a heavily customized off road truck with armor plating. Your pizza is delivered in 30 mins or the Mafioso and family will come to your door and apologize in person. And then have the errant delivery boy "dealt with"

Harisenbon wrote:Although I'm highly against the tattooing of kanji that you can't read on yourself, I do own snow crash in Japanese, and can go look up what "poor impulse control" was officially translated into.

I don't remember it having the same impact as the english version, though.

I'd be very interested to see what translation they chose as well. Please do post it!

1. Kanji looks cool.2. I am consulting a panel of experts to help me translate it right.3. I do not want 99% of the people I see to understand it.

That's probably the reasons no one (at least not me) is taking that very seriously. The main problem of "kanji looks cool" is that .. it makes no sense. I agree kanji are wonderful when they are written right by a calligrapher or someone who studied calligraphy, but for all the rest they will be rendered ugly.When I started learning Japanese I thought about getting a tattoo of 無常 because, well, that's cool isn't it? The problem was that 1) I would have wanted it in 草書 (sousho) style 2) I would have wanted it to be written respecting stroke order. Then I thought otherwise because it made no sense having something no one understands, and having something it would be laughable for someone who understands it. (And then trying to teach 書道 (shodou, Japanese calligraphy) and (the importance of) stroke order to the guy at the tattoo parlor would have been a too big task for me.)If you want something no one understands why not Etruscan or linear A ...

Then again about the translation itself. There is probably no way you are going to find three kanji that actually mean what you want them to mean. At that point it's exactly the same to pick up three kanji you like and tell everyone they mean that.